Sex Offender Hysteria Good for Getting Votes and Keeping the Prisons Stocked but not much else

Dr. B. Cayenne Bird, American Chronicle, February 11, 2006

Dr. B. Cayenne Bird is an ordained minister and a 37-year veteran op-ed journalist and publisher. She volunteers her time as founder and director of United for No Injustice, Oppression or Neglect UNION. The UNION is active in prison reform and criminal justice issues. She is a mother and grandmother and focuses on human rights and restorative justice. She is also the host of television series "Cayenne Common Sense" and publishes a daily online newsletter to subscribers.

Picture caption: Mothers of every race and religion come together to issue this warning to California's parents. 

"Sex Offender Laws Endanger Your Teens and Young People much more than they protect them. Even more children will be left at the mercy of a broken foster care system where child molestation happens daily. Often when the politicians try and fix things, other things break - like lives."

Fear for your teens if either Jessica's Law gets voted in at the polls this November by the Repug voting machine made of law enforcement labor unions. All it takes to get a conviction for a sex offense in California is an accusation. If you saw the special series done by the San Jose Mercury News "Tainted Trials" www.mercurynews.com, you can see that the criminal justice system is corrupt arrest through parole.

The Repugs have floated an initiative campaign (Jessica's Law) paid for mostly by law enforcement including CCPOA prison guard's union (whose members mostly vote in the Repug party) that is so harsh that it forced the Dems to come up with a bill almost as ridiculous. Neither solve the problem of preventing mental illness that causes child molestation to occur.

The argument is not that some people are not guilty but this crime is often the result of child custody disputes and nasty divorces. Proper investigations would be a good investment because these certainly do not take place now.

There are some people who do need to be removed from society but it would be better to protect the public safety to do it in a much more healing manner than is in place right now. Treatment works and the offenses that put mostly young people in these databases for life are not all the heinous types of crimes that the politicians would lead you to believe

It is very clear that Republicans are the source of the oppression on this nationwide sex hysteria and it's all profit and vote motivated. 

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People were in denial for many years that the Repugs are in fact the source of Fascist laws that disregard the Constitution.

There is chaos in the states where these laws have been put into effect and not one can report effective results.

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If anyone really wanted to help children, they'd be insisting on prevention of mental illness and cleaning up the foster care system which is rife with sexual child abuse. Recidivism according to many sources is 3% to 5% and very few of these are the "snatch and run" types.

The internet is full of studies about treatment and prevention and as a real solution to the problem which isn't nearly as large as the political fearmongers would have you think.

The son you save by not voting in favor of Jessica's law might be your own as teens are being ensnared in similar laws across the country

Bring 20 people to the polls to vote against any candidate of either party backed by law enforcement labor unions. While these are mainly Repugs, there are those who pose as Democrats too. The punishers are from the dark ages and all this is about building budgets for more punishing. What we need is healing and we need to elect healers who are going to be smart on crime and come up with real solutions.